As deadly Israeli airstrikes pounded the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, Israel said it had regained control of the border areas from the Palestinian group Hamas.
Fears of a regional conflagration have surged ahead of an expected Israeli ground incursion into Gaza, the crowded, impoverished enclave from where Hamas launched its land, air and sea attack on the Jewish Sabbath.
Gaza’s health ministry said on Wednesday afternoon at least 1,055 Palestinians had been killed and 5,184 injured in the crowded coastal enclave since Saturday while Israel’s military said the death toll there had reached 1,200 and more than 2,700 people had been wounded. Israel’s army said the bodies of roughly 1,500 fighters had been found.
International NGOs issued a stark warning over the health and humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.
“My entire life, I have seen Israel kill us, confiscate our lands and arrest our children,” said Farah al-Saadi, 52, a coffee vendor from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank who praised the Hamas offensive.
The Israeli army has called up 300,000 reservists and massed tanks and other heavy armour both near Gaza and on the northern border with Lebanon, where exchanges of fire continued.
The military said its forces had largely reclaimed the embattled south and the border around Gaza, and dislodged holdout Hamas fighters from more than a dozen towns and kibbutzim.
Earlier, for the third time in 24 hours, an Israeli air strike hit Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt, an AFP photographer and an NGO said.
A mourner reacts while burying the body of a Palestinian child of al-Agha family, who was killed in Israeli strikes, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 11, 2023. — Reuters
White smoke billowed from among fishing boats after an air strike on Gaza’s port, and in Jerusalem, the deserted streets were targeted by Hamas rocket fire.
“Israeli people they are scared of the Arabs and the Arabs are scared of the Jews… everybody is scared of each other,” said Ahmed Karkash, a shop owner in the Old City.
